Any Disaster

Prepare Yourself for a Riot Situation

Riots are becoming an increasingly more widespread problem of modern life as civil unrest overwhelms the rule of law. Whether riots happen at a sporting event or when traveling internationally, you often don’t get much warning before the powder keg of a riot ignites. Domestic “social justice” riots are becoming an unfortunate consequence of a polarized America. Whether you find yourself involved in a situation with an angry mob of protesters or having to defend your property against looters, here are a few tips on how to protect yourself and your property in a riot situation.

Why do Riots Take Place?

People generally conduct themselves appropriately at large events and respect the rule of law. Some events, because they incite euphoria in the people, might cause people to act in a manner that they normally wouldn’t if left to their own devices. Any large crowd can bebroken down into passive participants, active participants and a small number of agitators. These agitators are growing in number due to social justice movements and online radicalization propaganda. The agitators can sway other people through contagion. Once a sufficient number of active participants are recruited by agitators, property destruction and violence are often the next outcomes of a riot.

Protecting Yourself and Your Family in a Riot

Should you be caught in a riot situation, there some safety tips you can follow.

Trust the gut instinct of you or your family members. If your family doesn’t feel safe or feels uneasy at some point during the event, then leave early rather than staying too late. If you or your family members get a tingle in your sixth sense, trust your gut and tell the others that you have a bad feeling.

If you know an access route into the event, use the same route to use as an escape route. Move swiftly through the crowd intent on getting out of the situation. By moving swiftly with intention, you’re also unconsciously signaling to those in your route that you’re not involved in whatever is about to go down.

Use your phones and make sure everyone you’re with has each other’s number in their contacts. If you ever get separated, you’ll need your phones to talk to each other. It would also be wise to plan a rendezvous point in case any in your party get separated. This should be a nearby trusted location such as a hospital, a church, a hotel or even a police station.

Dealing With Aggressive Mobs

A riot situation regularly has groups of people breaking off from the main riot “pack” and going after individuals. What if you have three or four attackers coming after you simultaneously? Whether it’s four or forty people attacking you, there’s always a limitation of how many people can actually attack at once. If you learn how to defend yourself against four, then you’ll know how to defend yourself against forty. If more people beyond four try to jump in, the physics of the situation won’t allow forty people all at once to start throwing punches at you.

Let’s say you’re surrounded by four people. The two most important tenets, when faced with multiple attackers, is to stay moving and strike first. Being a stationary target opens you up to getting sucker punched from a blind side. If they simultaneously come after you, you want to duck out of the way and try to hit two of the attackers in their groin area. With two of the incapacitated attackers on the ground forming a temporary barrier, the other two will have to jump or go around the fallen attackers. And that’s your cue to run for your life.

Another tactic, when confronted by a rioting gang, is to simply run first. Your first option is to get someplace safe. If you can’t get to a safe location, then try going somewhere strategic like a stairwell. By going up a few steps on a stairwell, you can fight your attackers one at a time while having an elevation advantage.

Protecting Your Home from Rioters and Looters

You can of course make breaching your house as difficult as possible by using fortified entry doors to your home. Bars or decorative iron work over your windows will also act as a deterrent. But what if a pack of criminals end up breaking into your home? The best way to safeguard your family against intruders is to pick a designated safe room to defend. While prepping your safe room, you want to provide some cover or concealment in case the rioters break into your home. The difference between cover and concealment is that cover will potentially stop a bullet. Concealment provides cover to hide a person without stopping a bullet. If you have solid wood bedposts in your bedroom, that would be good for both cover and concealment.

Most rooms will have one entryway or door, and you want to get as far from that door while staying behind our cover. You want to be back to see as much of the room as possible. You would stay in your concealed position with your gun in hand. If you call 911, then you want to tell them that you are holed up in your safe room. Stay there until the police show up. Your safe room should be stocked with non-perishable food and bottle water in case the standoff lasts for more than a day. You’ll also want to have multiple fire extinguishers stashed around your house and in your safe room in case your house gets fire bombed.

If you have young children, you certainly are not going to leave them out in harm’s way. You’ll need to retrieve them as quickly as possible and bring them back to your safe room. So although you’re going to put yourself in some jeopardy, you want that jeopardy to be as short as possible. The most dangerous thing you can do while your domicile is potentially under siege is trying to hunt somebody down. Equipped with a flashlight and a laser sight on your gun, you’re going to clear one room at a time as you search for your loved ones.

Another important point is that when you leave your safe room to search for your other family members, that location is where you’d told the police you were going to be. If you’re wandering around the house with a gun and a flashlight, keep in mind that the police won’t know you by sight. That’s why it’s crucial to gather up your loved ones and get them into the safe house as quickly as possible. It’s a great idea to practice drills where all family members meet back at the designated safe area. Don’t just grab your flashlight and gun and go racing down the hallway. Designate a safe place for your family and stay there until help arrives.

If you find yourself in a riot, protect yourself, protect your family and get the heck out of there. If you’re at home, bear down in your safe room with gun in hand. When a breakdown in the rule of law happens, you need to be prepared. Grab a free copy of our Survival Guide and Checklist today.

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At Any Disaster our mission is to be the best disaster blog providing a vast array of knowledge, tactics, and skills in the disaster and preparedness fields, to any and all who wish to become more prepared for whatever disaster may come. We will take a logical and no nonsense approach to disaster survival without bias in hopes of dispelling the myth that anyone who prepares themselves is crazy or paranoid. You're not and you are not alone.
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Our disaster blog provides a vast array of knowledge, tactics, and skills in the disaster, survival, and preparedness fields, to any and all who wish to become more prepared for whatever may come. Unlike other survival blogs, we will take a logical and no nonsense approach to sharing prepper news, do-it-yourself skills, and more.